The Solange Argument as a Justification for Disobeying the Security Council in the Kadi Judgments

Abstract

The Kadi judgments of the courts of the EU have received enormous scholarly attention and have had significant practical impact. And reasonably so: they are landmark decisions, with numerous implications for several crucial issues, from the relationship between different legal orders to the primacy of Security Council decisions, from the required level of protection of fundamental human rights in the application of coer-cive measures against individuals to the competence of the EU, and so forth. This brief study focuses on one particular aspect of the Kadi decisions: their employment of the Solange argument as a justification for disobeying the Security Council by not implementing its binding decisions.

Keywords: Security Council, sanctions, EU courts, dualism, Solange, disobedience, Chapter VII, UN Charter, primary EU law, human rights, right to an effective remedy